2020 politics make an immigration deal unlikely in lame-duck

Immigration was a good issue for Senate Republicans in the midterm elections, but Democrats see it as a winner for them in 2020 and have little desire to negotiate on the issue in the lame-duck session or next year.

Democrats say they are content to take the issue into 2020, when Democratic voters are projected to turn out in larger numbers and two pivotal Senate races will be fought in states with large Hispanic populations: Arizona and Colorado.

“One, it will continue to help with suburban women. Number two, it will mobilize Latino voters,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster. “The third thing [is], particularly if Democrats lean into it, immigration can be a huge liability [for Republicans].

“There gets to be a point where voters are really frustrated that all you do is divide people without proposing any workable solutions,” she added. “The presidential election allows for a real debate on this and in that debate [Democrats] will have the popular side of the issues.”

They’re waiting with anxiety to see where Trump comes down on the issue of border security and whether he could sign a year-end spending deal that doesn’t provide for an actual wall. Trump said he would wait until after the election to decide whether to threaten a government shutdown to force the Democrats’ hand on the border wall.

Asked last week whether he would pursue a shutdown strategy, Trump replied, “Not necessarily.” But on the campaign trail this year, Trump repeatedly mentioned the wall and how it will be built.

Schumer says he’s not very interested in negotiating a deal that would give Trump the funding he wants for the wall in exchange for reauthorization of DACA, something that GOP senators thought was possible before the election.

“The president is a very poor negotiator on those issues. He makes agreements and he backs off. So we’re sort of dubious of sitting down with the president and making that kind of exchange when twice he’s shaken hands and backed off,” Schumer said last week.

A Senate Democratic aide noted that there’s less incentive for Democrats to agree to funding Trump’s border wall in the December lame-duck session now that they have captured control of the House and will have more leverage on immigration next year.

Democratic lawmakers, however, haven’t yet had a chance to gather in Washington to discuss their strategy moving forward.

Pro-immigrant advocacy groups are skeptical of working out anything with Trump anytime soon.

“There’s certainly an effort to try to get the Dream Act passed, but I think Schumer is probably right. I don’t think that Trump is ready to do a clean DREAM bill and I don’t think the compromise Schumer initially offered is still on the table,” said Brent Wilkes, the former executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens and president of Wilkes Strategies.

The Dream Act would protect immigrants who came to the country illegally as children from deportation if they meet certain requirements.

“I don’t think we’ll be seeing a compromise because, primarily, I don’t see the president being reasonable. He’s going to be demanding his wall funding and may even try to shut down the government over that,” he added. “From where we sit today, it doesn’t look good.”

Wilkes said there’s no reason to compromise with Trump over the wall during the lame-duck when they can use control of the House next year to get him to agree to a DACA fix.

“A shutdown never helps the party that causes it,” he said, discounting Trump’s leverage.

Democrats were more eager to cut a deal on DACA and the border wall before the 2018 midterm elections, when they had to defend five vulnerable incumbents running in states that Trump won by double digits.

“They want these caravans full of illegal aliens coming into our country, overwhelming your schools, depleting your resources and endangering your communities,” Trump told a crowd in Indianapolis a few days before the election.

Polls from earlier this year showed a large majority of Americans supported maintaining DACA, which Trump rescinded in September of 2017.

The status of the program is now in the midst of a legal battle, and the government continued to accept DACA renewal applications after a federal judge in the Northern District of California issued an injunction against the program’s termination.

Lake said Trump “definitely would benefit” from striking a deal to reimplement DACA but questioned whether he would want to do it.

“It would be nice if we get a budget deal that includes wall funding,” he said. “We’ll see what the traffic will bear when we get into the discussion. We have to do a budget to wrap up the year and some other cats